‘Hercules Falling’ review: Dar Salim is phenomenal as a troubled war veteran in powerful Danish drama

Dir: Christian Bonke. Denmark. 2025. 104mins

Former Danish soldier Youssef (Dar Salim) has clocked up tours of duty in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. At the time, it was just a job. But now he’s back at home with his family, he realises that his combat experiences have stayed with him. A violent incident prompts Youssef to seek help at a voluntary mental health facility for Danish veterans on the island of Strynø. Documentarian Christian Bonke’s feature film debut peoples a fictional story with real-live combat veterans and therapists, to powerful effect. Salim, shuttered and silent for much of the film, is phenomenal, but the supporting cast is equally impressive and wholly authentic.

Salim’s star power should be a significant draw

The film, which won Tallinn’s First Feature Competition, is Bonke’s first fiction film, but it is a continuation of an approach to filmmaking which blends documentary and narrative elements. His previous credits include the feature documentary Ballroom Dancer, co-directed with Andreas Koefoed, which picked up a prize at Tribeca in 2012, and he has also directed music videos, commercials and TV documentary series.

Hercules Falling was made with the collaboration of Anne-Line Ussing and her husband, Stuart Press, who run the nature and therapy facility on Strynø where the film was largely shot, and who appear as themselves in the film. (Press served in the Australian army and was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD). Youssef’s story was drawn from the real-life experiences shared by the veterans who attended the retreat. Films about mental health crises are not the easiest sell, but Salim’s star power should be a significant draw.

The incident that causes Youssef to realise that he has a problem is sudden and shocking. He’s asleep on the sofa next to his nine-year-old son Oskar (Hector Banissi); his wife Laerke (Christine Gjerulff) is out for the evening, leaving her boys together for a bonding night. But when Oskar tries to shake his father awake, Youssef stares at him, unrecognising, eyes black with rage and his hands clenched around the child’s throat. But even before the PTSD tears through his family life, there are hints, in Salim’s extraordinary, understated performance, that all is not well. Even sitting motionless in a car as he waits for Oskar to finish school, Youssef looks like unexploded ordnance about to blow.

Youssef says very little in the first week or so at Strynø. But his hostility to this place with its yurt and safe spaces couldn’t be clearer if he was screaming it at the top of his lungs, Salim is a formidable physical presence on screen, bulked up and knotted. He brilliantly captures the quandary of a fighting man who is forced to recognise his own frailty. Youssef is charged with a restless, destructive energy. And he’s not alone in this. There’s a lovely bonding moment when he stumbles across another former soldier, Felix (Marcus MP) digging a hole as a way of calming down. They take turns with the spade, then stand awkwardly looking at the product of their labours. “Let’s just enjoy the hole,” says Felix, quietly.

It’s a bumpy road that Youssef has chosen to walk, with setbacks at every turn. The butchery of one of the sheep on the farm triggers a breakdown; but from there Youssef starts to understand what traumas are lurking like landmines in his psyche. The bleak, discordant score grows more melodic and airier, and in time, his wife and child feel safe enough to visit. But as the wind blows across the island, Oskar comments that it feels as though there’s a tsunami brewing. The foreshadowing metaphor couldn’t be clearer: there are rough times still to come.